Some Planning Details on the Joan MacQueen Playing Fields Proposal

Thu September 21, 2017 05:35pm

California’s “Civic Center Act” ensures that public school facilities are also facilities open to the general public for use any time when school operations permit. Before & after school hours and on weekends are typical. This is the complete norm at Joan McQueen. Use of school facilities by organized entities requires prior approval, insurance indemnifications waiver, trash pickup and repairs of incidental damages and so on. Events held on public school properties but hosted by 3rd parties and that are open to the public fall under the County’s Community Event Permitting process. Within the CEP process there are several aspects of regulation to protect the public, including considerations to traffic, parking, food preparation and serving, uniformed safety, emergency medical services, and so on.
The school district has the accountability to maintain the playing fields, but the various youth sports federations that use the fields contribute handsomely in both money and hard physical work.
The Alpine Education Foundation (AEF) proposal includes the concept of setting-up a 3rd party non-profit to take on the scheduling, operations and management of the playing fields; including raising the funding needed to perform professional maintenance and upkeep. The board of the non-profit would be made-up of all major user groups, including obviously the school district. Each member group contributes funding in a prior agreed manner based upon usage analyses. The public too through a user’s fee, coupled with fund-raising solicitations. The Alpine Union School District Board’s unanimous Resolution in support of the playing field upgrade proposal includes support for the proposal’s operations and maintenance recommendations.
All youth sports organizations, the school district, and other stakeholders – including Alpine’s service organizations – are in the process of signing a Memorandum of Understanding to this principle. It is nearly complete.
California’s “Quimby Act” requires property developers doing business in unincorporated towns to contribute to a ‘park land fund’ for those unincorporated communities to be used to build park/sports infrastructure. By law, those funds can only be dispensed to a government agency, especially agencies that have an ability to deliver sports related services broadly across the community they serve. Public schools are one preferred “government agencies” for obvious reasons. Developers’ funds cannot be distributed for operations and maintenance. The County of San Diego’s supporting ordinance to the Quimby Act is the “Park Land Development Ordinance”. Ironically, the existing playing fields at Joan MacQueen were built twenty years ago by using PLDO funds. And so have other school-related parks in Alpine.
The prescribed and usual mechanism is for the County to enter into a Joint-Agencies Agreement for sports facilities. Conceptually, as one party to the Joint Agencies Agreement, the County makes available certain infrastructure investment funding (the PLDO funding) to a project for which the public is entitled to use during non-school hours, and the other party to the Agreement, Alpine Union, assumes the legal ownership, liabilities, operations and maintenance of the new or improved facilities.
The AEF proposal extends the concept even further through the establishment of a non-profit of all community stakeholders to jointly undertake operations and maintenance, and to not leave “the entire bushel” as an obligation of the school district and its taxpayers. Of course, we are looking at as many possible sources of grant funding as there may be. PLDO funds are unique as they cost the taxpayers nothing incrementally and their allocation to school districts is at no cost to school districts. That’s an unsurpassed deal.
The middle school site already contains all the infrastructure needed; nearly 10 acres including power, water, roadways, access, parking, fire protection, communications, and even a gymnasium. The AEF proposal is to re-landscape under-used, incomplete, dirt and “expensive to maintain” grass playing fields into regulation-sized, lower cost to maintain, all weather, artificial turf multi-use football, soccer and softball fields, The costs will be perhaps about $1.5 million.
Buying land in Alpine with water, power, sewer infrastructure ranges to $150,000 an acre; call it $1.5 million for a ‘new’ non-school site. Then building all the needed infrastructure to support grass or artificial turf surfaces is likely another $6.0 million. That sort of project requires years and years of studies and a hard, hard time arranging funding. And in the end, that route demands more money from taxpayers. The AEF proposal – essentially to re-landscape to artificial turf - could cost 20% of that. The multiple grant fundings being targeted are appropriated in government budgets now. And the project could be operational in a matter of months.
With its Trustees unanimous Resolution supporting the project, the AUSD has taken the lead agency role. It has formed a District Committee and will be undertake the project under its authorities as a government agency. The District will be accountable for all the issues needed to bring the project to completion. As AUSD readies to take-over, it does so at a time when the project is nearly fully-scoped through participation with and input from the various youth sports federations in Alpine, and with the Joan MacQueen Middle School Athletics Department. The costs have been refined through bidding. There has been valuable design and specification input from the County Parks & Recreation Department. Outreach is ongoing right now to build community consensus. The Alpine Community Planning Group has voted to prioritize this project proposal in its PLDO Parks List (formally initiating the County’s ongoing role). And the Alpine Education Foundation has begun stepping-back and is one of the major supporters of the project under the leadership of our school district.
There is nothing new or different in this concept. Indeed, it was the process used to build the Joan MacQueen sports fields in the first instance; and it is akin to the project to bring a multi-use artificial turf playing field to Alpine Elementary 18 months ago. The Alpine Community Planning Group also prioritized that project on its PLDO Parks List, and voted to fund that project from the Alpine PLDO account balance. It turns out that the AES project ended-up be funded entirely by the County’s Neighborhood Reinvestment Program and from private donations; and the PLDO funds were not needed. Supervisor Dianne Jacob formally commissioned the AES field. I’m hopeful she will also do the honor at the upgraded Joan MacQueen playing fields.
One added comment on Supervisor Jacob. Since the kick-off of the Alpine Revitalization Program in Alpine by Supervisor Jacob, a decade of trying has failed to turn-up any potential of land for sale within Alpine to satisfy the community’s number one priority of more sports facilities. There were two properties located; one in Descanso and one in far east Japatul Valley. Both sites are undesirable; as who wants a community sports park that isn’t actually in the community?
Now there is a real, viable opportunity to upgrade existing facilities already owned by taxpayers – a middle school sports playing fields. And the cost to do so is perhaps 80% LESS than any conceivable grassroots project. Moreover, the funding will largely be from a grants process for which taxpayers and the school district pay no incremental money.
It’s a great deal. Alpiner’s should reach-out to support this wonderful opportunity to support the 1,800 kids attending our schools, and the 2,000 youth that belong to our area sports federations, and the 1,000s of ordinary citizens that use our school facilities already. What we citizens have now is way beyond deficient. The facilities are 3rd World by any measure. Here’s a chance to catapult Alpine Union into the Destination District of the East County.